According to a report by FierceWireless, Leap Wireless has lost 27% of its customers over the past 18 months. 92,000 of those left in the final quarter of 2013. Who’s to blame? “Increasing competition from nationwide operators“, but mostly: T-Mobile and its MetroPCS brand.

Interestingly, Leap Wireless is being bought out by T-Mobile’s fiercest rivals, AT&T. However, the difference between when the $1.2b bid was made public last July and now is around half a million subscribers. Leap’s gone down from over 5 million to 4.5 million in the space of 8 months. It’s surely looking forward to the day it’s swallowed up by AT&T, on or around the 14th of this month.

“Competition in the wireless industry has increased and intensified in recent quarters, particularly from carriers and their affiliated brands with robust nationwide networks and significantly greater deployment of 4G LTE technology. In particular, we have been experiencing increased competition in many of our core Cricket markets from nationwide carriers increasingly targeting the prepaid segment, including from T-Mobile’s nationwide expansion of the MetroPCS prepaid brand utilizing the T-Mobile 4G LTE network,”

It’s clear then, that with other major carriers adopting similar strategies, and with smaller carriers shipping subscribers, T-Mobile’s Uncarrier movement is working.

About Cam Bunton

Cam Bunton, Managing Editor. A film school graduate from the University of Cumbria, UK, Cam's past life was in mobile phone retail. His passion for cell phones got him in to that industry, and then in to this one. A family man with three kids, he somehow manages to balance his work duties with family life and a runaway Twitter addiction. Follow him on twitter: @CamBunton

Cricket is such a stoooopid name for a wireless company! Really looking forward to Tmo’s 1st qtr results!!! Should be interesting. Anyone happen to know when T-Mobile’s 1st qtr results will be announced?

SEBA

Aha, after 1st quarter ends

Jay Holm

Which is when? End of this month?

SEBA

1 quarter is 3 months, so April the earliest

Jay Holm

Last year they announced their 1st qtr results on May 8th, so I guess I can go by that.

thatguy

since they are publicly traded now, probably a bit sooner than that for investors….but its a good point of reference

pcjnyc

1Q 2014 will be announced during the week of April 21st.

D Man

So you can say they “leaped” to t-mo?

rene

hahhahahahaha, nothing better than that, good joke

sushimane

What can leap do about it? That’s the name of the game competition u take other carrier customers.

S. Ali

No kidding, they run on the Sprint network and you can’t just buy any phone and pop in a SIM card. When ATT combines AIO and Cricket, they might start looking competitive.

tomb77

So since the AT&T and Leap has been public, Leap customers have been jumping ship. Is it T-Mobiles fault or AT&Ts.

Adrayven

I have to agree. T-Mobile experienced similar defections when ATT tried to buy them out. Thats called turning a blind eye to obvious truth on Leaps part IMO. Their customers just don’t want to be with AT&T..

sleathLTE

This is sort of ironic because orginally the tmobile/metropcs was going to be a 3way deal to include leap/crickett. So Tmobile wouldve been able to swallow up Leap and shut down that netowork quickly, if it had happened.

Stone Cold

I wish they could of got Leap also

Paul

That’s cool, brin’em on over!

gadget_hero

I hope that AT&T and T-Mobile can work out spectrum swaps/sales for Leap’s A Block 700MHz spectrum

dontsh00tmesanta

Considering tmobile has better coverage and speeds…….no brainer

Randall Lind

No One want AT&T so they are leaving. I will leave T-Mo if we become Sprint.

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